Baku Operation of 1920

Baku Operation of 1920 

offensive operation by the troops of the Eleventh Army of the Caucasian front (commanded by M. K. Levandovskii), carried out in cooperation with the Volga-Caspian military flotilla in April and May of 1920 during the Civil War. Its goal was to help the workers of Azerbaijan, who on April 27 under Communist leadership began an armed rebellion against the Musavatist government, which they deposed on the night of April 28. The threat of support for the Musavatists by the Menshevik government of Georgia and English interventionists demanded a quick operation. On April 27 four armored trains with landing troops under the command of M. G. Efremov set out on the Petrovsk-Baku railroad, and on the morning of April 28 arrived in Baku. The leaders of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan—A. I. Mikoyan, G. M. Musabekov, and G. P. Dzhabiev—also arrived in the trains. Elements of the Eleventh Army moved in after the armored trains and entered Baku on April 29. On April 30, Levandovskii, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, and S. M. Kirov arrived. Later, the ships of the Volga-Caspian flotilla sailed into the port of Baku. The Second Cavalry Corps, with its advance on Kusary, Kuba, Shemakha, and Kiurdamir, assured the success of the operation from the west and cut off the path of retreat of the Musavat troops to Gandzha. In ten to 15 days, Soviet troops freed almost the entire territory of the republic and helped the Azerbaijani workers conclusively establish Soviet power.

REFERENCES

Tokarzhevskii, E. A. Iz istorii inostrannoi interventsii i grazhdanskoi voiny v Azerbaidzhane. Baku, 1957.
Kadishev, A. B. Interventsiia i grazhdanskaia voina v Zakavkaze. Moscow, 1960.